$ diff qwen-3-8 minimax-m3
Qwen 3.8 Max vs MiniMax M3
Values come from Qwen 3.8 Max and MiniMax M3, where each is cited to its source. This page states no benchmark result and ranks neither model — it puts two published specifications next to each other. Where a lab has not published a figure, the row says so rather than guessing.
Alibaba QwenQwen 3.8 Max
- context
- 1M
- weights
- open
- $/M in
- $2
- $/M out
- $6
- context
- 1M
- weights
- open
- $/M in
- $0.3
- $/M out
- $1.2
What actually differs
- Context window
- Identical — both accept 1M tokens, so context length is not a reason to pick either.
- Input price
- MiniMax M3 at $0.3/M against $2/M — 6.7× cheaper to feed. Standard rates: one of these labs also quotes a lower cached-input tier, which applies only when a prefix is reused — see the full spec below.
- Output price
- MiniMax M3 at $1.2/M against $6/M — 5.0× cheaper to generate. Output dominates the bill on most agentic workloads, where the model writes far more than it reads.
- Weights
- Both publish weights — Qwen 3.8 Max under Open-weight announced for the week of 2026-08-10; not yet shipped, MiniMax M3 under Open-weight (HuggingFace). Check the licences rather than assuming they permit the same commercial use.
- Recency
- Qwen 3.8 Max shipped 63 days after MiniMax M3 (2026-08-03 vs 2026-06-01).
Full spec
| Attribute | Qwen 3.8 Max | MiniMax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Alibaba Qwen | MiniMax |
| Released | 2026-08-03 | 2026-06-01 |
| Context window | 1 million tokens | 1,000,000 tokens (1M); min. 512K guaranteed |
| Pricing | $2 / M input · $6 / M output | $0.30/M input · $1.20/M output ($0.06/M cached input) — OpenRouter catalogue, read 2026-07-28 |
| License | Open-weight announced for the week of 2026-08-10; not yet shipped | Open-weight (HuggingFace) |
| Availability | Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (global), QwenWork | API (global, including English) + open-weight on HuggingFace |